A Plea Deal, Then Freedom, in Terror Case Where Prosecutors Kept Evidence a Secret

By JONATHAN MILLER

Published: March 8, 2003

PATERSON, N.J., March 5—
The young man walked into the second-floor offices of All Services Plus right at closing time, 4 p.m., on a Saturday. He came like hundreds of others before him, to get a fake identification card for $35.

But this customer was particularly impatient. He was leaving the state, he said, and needed the ID soon. Four days later, he became enraged when the ID was not ready. When he finally received it the next day, he demanded that Mohamed el-Atriss, who runs All Services, give back his photograph and application.

''You face it, sometimes, from a customer,'' Mr. Atriss said.

Mr. Atriss said he did not think again about the visit until a few days after Sept. 11, 2001, when an F.B.I. agent paid him a visit, explaining that the young man, Khalid Al-Midhar, and another to whom Mr. Atriss had sold a fake ID, Abdulaziz Alomari, had been among the 19 hijackers in the terror attacks.

Since then, Mr. Atriss, 46, has had plenty of time to think about the matter. He spent nearly six months in the Passaic County jail while state prosecutors pressed charges related to the document sales and used secret evidence to raise his bail to $500,000, a sum usually reserved for murder suspects. Prosecutors have kept the evidence sealed, and had argued that release of the information had the potential to jeopardize national security.

Now he is a free man, of sorts. After he pleaded to lesser charges as part of a plea agreement, a State Superior Court judge sentenced Mr. Atriss on Tuesday to five years' probation and a $15,000 fine.

The penalty is high for a false-documents case, but it could have been worse. Mr. Atriss had faced 10 years in prison if convicted of racketeering charges for selling ''simulated documents'' to the hijackers -- Mr. Midhar was on the plane that hit the Pentagon, Mr. Alomari on one of the jets that struck the World Trade Center -- and hundreds of others.

''I'm glad, obviously, that it's over,'' Mr. Atriss said in an interview this week. He said he had lost his house, had no money to speak of, and was stung that his name had been linked to the terror attacks, which he said he abhorred.

''Nobody wished for any human being to die the way it happened Sept. 11,'' he said. ''I want to emphasize that people don't label me as a terrorist.''

Prosecutors began with the assumption that Mr. Atriss presented a security threat, but that changed. They say they hope he feels chastened by his punishment, and they add that Mr. Atriss has cooperated with them in the case. Nevertheless, the evidence remains sealed.

The case against Mr. Atriss has reverberated far beyond Paterson. It spotlighted a struggle between local and federal authorities in investigating terrorism, and prompted changes to the way New Jersey issues search warrants. It highlighted the use of secret evidence in national-security cases, and prompted the State Legislature to consider longer maximum jail sentences for document-fraud cases.

But these days, Mr. Atriss seems to have more mundane issues on his mind. He is happy merely to sit at home, drink coffee and watch his favorite television program, ''The Steve Harvey Show,'' a sitcom set in an urban high school. He is trying to bring his wife, Wessam, and three of his five children back from Egypt, where he and the family were visiting last year when his business was raided. Mr. Atriss surrendered himself there and was arrested on his arrival at Kennedy International Airport.

A soft-spoken but solidly built man with graying hair and a beard, Mr. Atriss grew up in Alexandria, Egypt. He studied engineering in college but never completed his degree. He came to the United States in 1980, lived in Jersey City for a year and managed a fast-food restaurant in Manhattan called Kansas Burger. Along the way, he married a woman from Indianapolis -- she died in a car crash in 1996 -- and raised a family.

Mr. Atriss drove taxis in Newark and opened a gas station in Harrison and a Dunkin' Donuts store in Parsippany. But none of these businesses did particularly well, he said. So in August 1999, he rented an office in Paterson at 152 Market Street, opposite City Hall, and began his document business. He says that he believed the operation was legitimate; similar businesses flourish in communities with many immigrants, like Paterson and Elizabeth, he says.

''I never had any idea that what I was doing was illegal,'' he said.

Most of his customers were Hispanic, he said, and he employed women who could speak Spanish. He devised a method to have people register as corporations so they could get car insurance and registration. He sold hundreds of phony international drivers' licenses, which he said many of his customers have used in fighting traffic and parking tickets, for $135 each. He sold Mr. Midhar, the hijacker, a document labeled ''United States Identification Card,'' bearing the New Jersey state seal.

In his interview, Mr. Atriss became visibly upset when recalling the attention generated by the raid on his office by Jerry Speziale, the Passaic County sheriff, with TV cameras and news reporters in tow.

He sighed heavily when recalling his days in prison, where, he said, he had spent many hours ''talking, thinking, crying sometimes.'' He said that he nearly lost all hope when secret evidence was used against him in a November hearing at which his bail was raised to $500,000 from $250,000. But Mr. Atriss's second lawyer, Miles R. Feinstein, appealed the bail decision, and a new hearing was set. Before it was held, a plea agreement was reached.

Steven Brizek, a senior assistant prosecutor for Passaic County, said people should not feel sorry for Mr. Atriss. After all, Mr. Brizek said, Mr. Atriss continued to sell illegal documents after Sept. 11, and after he knew the risks. He even opened a second business, in Elizabeth.

Judge Marilyn C. Clark castigated Mr. Atriss this week for what she called ''reckless and callous disregard'' for the safety of others in continuing to sell the documents. ''He should have known that it was potentially inviting a disaster,'' she said.

In court, Mr. Atriss and his lawyer did not dispute the point. But afterward, Mr. Atriss said that a Paterson police officer and a member of the prosecutor's office had informed him that his business was above board.

Mr. Brizek said, ''I do not know of any prosecutor who would express the opinion that what he was doing was legitimate.''

Mr. Atriss now lives with his son Mohamed Jr., 18, and his daughter Fatima, 19, and her husband in Union County. He tried to return to his old house, he said, but the landlord refused to renew the lease because of skittishness about the raid.

Mr. Atriss has started making plans to open a maintenance business or a cleaning service, he said. As part of his probation he must remain in New Jersey.

He said that he did not believe that he should be blamed for a role in the attacks. ''I regret what happened,'' Mr. Atriss said, ''but I don't feel in any way responsible for it.''

Photo: Mohamed el-Atriss spent six months in Passaic County jail as prosecutors pressed charges related to the sale of fake ID's to two hijackers. (Richard Perry/The New York Times)